Sci-Fi Vistas Milked From Boring Old Earth

For the last ten-plus years, Allison Davies traveled the world alone, stalking unfamiliar landscapes. The resultant series Outerland – recently published by Charles Lane Press – is a welcome mixture of art and sci-fi; Davies mysteriously and deliberately omits locations and words to create an alternate world from the scraps of this one.

The photographer is no stranger to mystery and intrigue. The shots for this collection were taken between intermittent assignments as an undercover private investigator for a Manhattan law firm. Iceland and Argentina are known locations, but as for the rest? Death Valley, Chile, Bolivia, New Mexico, Eastern Oregon?

Occasionally Davies steps out into the alien vistas donning a spacesuit of her own design, but for the most part the photos are seeds for the viewers’ fantasies of distant worlds.

“Like the conquering expeditionary photographs of the 19th century, we are in alien terrain, free of history, culture and memories,” writes Freddy Langer for the popular German newspaper, The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Langer has been drawn in deep to Outerland‘s sinister Romanticism. “They do not invite the viewer to feel good. Rather, they espouse a delicate approach to these new lands, and a warning to scan them cautiously. It is a double-bladed invitation.”

Davies began the work for Outerland in 1998 as an Yale MFA student under the tutelage of Gregory Crewdson. According to James Danziger, renowned NYC gallerist and photo editor, Davies’ photos inspired the title for “Another Girl, Another Planet,” Crewdson’s seminal 1999 curated exhibition of female photographers working with constructed narratives. The show launched the careers of her classmates, Taryn Simon, Katy Grannan and others, yet for Davies, what followed was the slow continuation of her a solo-planetary mission.

Is Davies an eco-warrior? Is this a portent of barren times – the aftermath of apocalyptic climate-change? Or is she envisioning a post Space-wars Earth? Could this be a world ravaged by chemical and biological agents – the spacer-loner sporting a bio-suit, not a space suit? Personally, we’d like some more (or any) concrete details, but letting the imaginations run wild is part of the appeal.

Outerland is the second title by Charles Lane Press, an independent publishing house with a focus on contemporary photography. Charles Lane Press was founded in 2008 by photographer Richard Renaldi and his partner Seth Boyd.

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